Dreams
by Kuri333
Summary: She won't stop them, for they are almost the only thing left from him. And it's because of them that she can get by. S03E05-06 Canon


It's been one year, two months and twelve days. That's more than four hundred nights, and an even larger amount of dreams.

Sometimes, God forgive me, there are not just dreams. My hands crawl under my nightshirt and try to recreate the paths traced by his, during that one wonderful, marvellous night, so long ago. They explore, and caress, and sometimes it even feels good, though I know it's nothing but a shadow of what it was.

It pains me to admit it, but some details of it are fading, so, as John says, I have to make memories for the both of us. Now my hands invent new paths as I close my eyes tight and imagine the warmth of his body next to mine.

One of the perks of finally being a lady's maid is that I don't have to share a room anymore. For this, I'm grateful.

Most of the nights, though, it's just dreams. As as curl under the covers and hug the pillow, conversations take place in my mind. "How was your day?" "Have you seen Lady Mary's riding boots?" I cross paths with him on the hallway and he holds the door to the servant's quarters open for me. "Yes, I rather liked that new pudding, too." We sit next to one another, as we have for so many years, and exchange looks that only we understand, and that tells us exactly what the other is thinking about. "It pains me to see Lady Grantham, too. So much suffering, and so unfair." He will nod, and tell me something I don't know about his past, or about life; maybe we are sitting in the courtyard and he will take my hand.

Sometimes the conversations are about us, and much more serious. Gloom threatens to take over. "I will wait, John, I have promised, but what if you never come out? What if I'm not able to hold my cheer and I start looking sad and grey to you? What if one morning I decide I can't do it anymore? To have you just for a brief time a week is the cruellest of jokes, and yet it is my favourite part of the week. How is that even possible? What if, despite everything I've told you, I prove to be unable to find that prove, that witness, that missing link the police overlooked that will set you free?"

I have cried myself to sleep more times than I care to admit. Even now, after so many months. I should be used by now.

Those dreams, of course, stay with me. He will never know that I ever doubt, not for a second.

Not tonight, though.

New evidence. A new witness. And Mr Murray, whom I dislike very much even though I shouldn't, came to the house and said he's going to talk to that Mrs Bartlett.

Although I know I will be right outside those hideous iron doors the moment he is out of prison, ready to take him home with me, I indulge myself in my favourite fantasy of all. One I have constructed over the months, varying a detail or two here and there, but essentially it's the same every time.

I am coming down the stairs into the servants' hall after tending to Lady Mary, maybe carrying a bundle of clothes in my arms. I hear the back door open and steps. Uneven steps I know so well after all these years adjusting mine to them. I stop walking, surprised, incredulous, and blood pumps harder through my veins, both then and in real life.

He walks in and, for once, the hall and corridors are miraculously empty. It's my fantasy and I'm entitled to do with it whatever I want.

"The door was open," he will say, and as I think about it I smile against the pillow. A small shadow of the way I'd beam in front of him. I can see him smiling as well, warmly, eyes shining, with that boyish abandon I have seen once or twice.

I leave the bundle at the foot of the stairs, forgetting about Lady Mary and laundry and walk to him. Run. Crash into his chest.

He stumbles a little, but his safe body is firm and I feel mine being wrapped by his arms.

"Welcome home," I whisper.

He just kisses me.

* * *

 **AN: This little drabble literally pop into my head at 1 am of the New Year, after having spent most of the last two days reading the script book for series 3.**

 **I'm glad to start a year like this. Happy 2016!**


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